My thoughts about poker, sports, and whatever else

October 24, 2010

So I was hospitalized about 6 weeks ago with extreme stomach pains, vomiting, and a fever. I obviously waited 2 hours after the initial stomach pain to go in making the waiting room a fun experience. After a cat scan, an ultrasound, and a test in which I had to sit still for 2 hours (in which an itch on my face would not go away for about 15 minutes) they found it to be a hyperactive gall bladder and gall stones. The surgeon went ahead and said I could have surgery or change my diet for a few weeks and it might go away but could come back in a week, 10 years, or 60 years.

I immediately texted a friend who was a nurse and she said she would just change my diet, as if I had it out it's possible that I would have to permanently change it which would mean no more junk food. Anyone that knows me can be sure this wouldn't fly too well. So a few weeks passed and I was still having random shooting pains in my side (like 2 seconds worth). I talked to the doctor after a few weeks and she said I had quite a bit of sludge in my system as well and it would take a while to clear that. After a few more weeks of eating healthy I was finally back to normal.

I talked to the doctor on Thursday and she said I can go back to a normal diet but she suggested slowly transitioning and would wait a couple weeks on alcohol. I was thinking to myself, but yeah if I go quickly I can be ready and able to drink in time for Halloween weekend. I casually asked her why I had to go slow out of curiosity. She mentioned that since I haven't been working my gall bladder too hard I don't want to shock my system and that's it's possible that I may need to take a couple day break slowing the process a bit more. Of course I didn't listen and tried to speed up the process.

The last few days I've basically been eating anything under the sun including a couple beers after our softball game on Thursday with no problems at all.For lunch today I had a loaded cheeseburger with fries from a local burger joint. Around dinner time I was thinking I'll be fine for next weekend. Then around 6 O'Clock I realized what the doctor had been talking about. Lets just sayÂ that my stomach has been extremely unsettled and I've made many trips to the men's room tonight. The lesson as usual is I'm an idiot and I will be eating healthy for the next few days, my stomach can't handle fatty foods for a bit. Also, Halloween weekend isn't going to be very fun for me, my only saving grace is the World Series is on Saturday night.

So since I've bored/grossed out my readers with a stomach story I figured I'd provide a little poker story. Last November was brutal for me, I unsuccessfully tried to make the jump to 200, had tilt problems, and chased up to 2knl. The first hand I played I picked up kings. We got it in preflop and he had aces. $2,000 down the drain just like that and my roll was extremely low. The first part of Decemeber was equally as bad, I was down to $446.76 in my poker account, that was all the money I had left online. I think I lost like 15 BIs at 100nl to start the month. I took this screen shot at the end of one of my last session. (December 10)

I remember starting that session with about $900 in my account and after losing the first couple BIs I was ready to go busto. I was still an effective coach but had too many tilt issues to be a successful player. As my account was dwindling I said to myself multiple times, if I go broke so be it and I'll just use my degree to get a real job. Finally I quit ended my session, not sure why I did or what made me do it but I finally clicked sit out.

After this nightmare I decided to take a drive and just think a little about all this poker stuff. After driving around for a little while something in my head told me to basically stop being a baby, I play a game for a living, both my parents work jobs they really don't like, most of my friends work jobs they don't like people are in much worse situations than I am, they work long sucky hours,Â and even when I'm losing I don't have it bad at all. It could be way worse, way worse.

So I thought of what I was going to do. Grind 50nl until I had 15 BIs for 100nl then grind that up. I was also ready to withdraw $1500 from my investments in order to have 30 more BIs for 50nl. In addition I rewatched Tommy's video series from scratch and made notes on it the second time. Fortunately I was able to snap out of my rutt and play focused again. I actually started with a 1 BI stoploss and 1 tabling and slowly progressed from there.

It was around here I decided that people could learn from this and might have the same problems as me and my idea came popped into my head for Down on the Farm. I had a good December and cashed out 700 I believe at the end of the month to start my Down on the Farm project. This whole road was incredibly humbling and I was a bit ashamed of it when it happened but there's no doubt it made me a better poker player and I was fortunate I didn't run bad when I had about 2 grand left in my bankroll. However after I stopped feeling sorry for myself I wasn't too worried about going busto at 50nl with a 2k bankroll. I'm just glad it worked out and thought I'd share basically the back story of my series.

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Adversity has ever been considered the state in which
a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.Samuel Johnson

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Posted By bosoxx34 at 06:25 AM

10 Comments:

Great story man, it's good to know that even very good professionals like yourself suffer from some of the same issues as amateurs like me. Love your series, GL in the future. Hope you get back to the high stakes soon.

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